It's been some silent months for this project, but that's not because Ekuator Games has stopped developing. As days went by, Celestian Tales: Old North went back to the drawing board, redesigned, restructured, and brought to a whole new level. The support of the community has brought the game further than where we imagined it could go.

We scrapped pixel-art background assets. We threw away 800x600 retro resolution. In their place were hand-drawn anvironment, 1280x720 resolution, and an art direction blending western and eastern styles. The result is a beautiful game that doesn't attempt to recreate the vintage, but re-imagines the classic with modern technology.

At this stage, Celestian Tales is not just a concept or idea. It's not a draft on papers or a compilation of sketches. It has a working, playable shape you'll be able to download and play very soon. However, we've been running on funds brought by external support, and that amount has now been depleted. With its renewed form, Celestian Tales returns to Kickstarter for support. With you on our backs, Ekuator Games is a team more than capable of making Celestian Tales a reality.

If this game is something you wish to happen, please join us to spread the word or consider becoming a backer.

Remember that half-colored artwork we showed you last time? It's now fully colored! Done in pencil and watercolor, here's the result after it's scanned:

As beautiful as it might look, we'll have to tone it digitally again. The colorful mix might get tiring in a game you'll play for hours, and we'd want the combat sprites to be the center piece, not flooded down by the background itself. The tone of the story is also darker and grittier, a background this bright wouldn't fit that feeling. Also, that crevasse in the middle of the image gets weird when combined with the attack animations designed for flat surfaces.

The original piece of the artwork shown above (A4, watercolored) is one of the rewards available for our SAGE tier backers.

We thought that this update would consist of that one image, and we're okay with that as long as we keep you updated. But wait -- they've done the digital retouch too! We still haven't remade the user interface, but you can enjoy this mockup while we build the playable combat in Unity for you to try out.

What do you think about the upgrades so far? Do tell us in the comments! =D

We've been receiving messages concerning our 'barebone graphics', and in our effort to answer we're on our way to revamp the combat backgrounds and environment from pixel arts to hand-drawn colors. Remember that sketch yesterday? Today it's halfway done into coloring:

Not using pixel backgrounds, in turn, lowers the workload for our dedicated pixel artist. This change gives her more time to add more animation frames to make them more fluid. Here's what she's been working on:

Starting Animation: You'll see this when you first enter a combat scene

Attack Animation: This is for a basic attack.

Other stuffs like idle stance, low HP, non-attack skill, defensive stance, and hit effect, you can peek at them yourself here[imgur.com].

What's a testbed? It's basically a 'room' for us to test features in programming that would be used in-game. For example, in this version we tested 3D sound in the form of a pop music embed to a green blob. In the game, this will be used for ambiences such as waterfalls, city fountains, and enemies (yes, you'll be able to detect some enemies through sound).

The control inputs are as follows (this was tested using an Xbox controller or Logitech Rumble 2. On a generic controller, the confirm button would be button 1):

Movement: WASD or Directional Buttons (Keyboard) / Left Analog (Xbox)

Choice: WASD or Directional Buttons (Keyboard) / D-Pad (Xbox)

Action: Z (Keyboard) / Button A (Xbox)

Run: X (keyboard) / Button B (Xbox)

*This uses Unity Web Player, so you might need to download for a few minutes.

Combat Background Concept

We received quite a lot of comments asking about the possibilities of a graphical upgrade. Originally we went the course of 'return to the classics', so the pixel-arts background and environment were made old school. But what do you think if the battle background looks like this?

Would you prefer pixel backgrounds or illustrated ones? Do send us a few comments here! =D